These late summer days, meal planning is easy work. With your family on vacation, you are in charge of monitoring the garden. Getting home from work, you pick the vegetables for the day and set about making what you want for supper. You love cooking for others, but there’s freedom in cooking for one. Not having to care about your family’s preferences or your friends’ allergies is both liberating and intimidating; limits make for helpful guide rails. But after harvesting the garden, you have some ideas.

Fresh beans have always been a favorite of yours. You grew up listening to stories from your parents about how you used to only eat “squeaky beans,” so-called because of the noise they make when chewed, with “dippy” (ketchup). You fill the bottom of the sink with water, drop two handfuls in, and swish them around to wash them. You snip off the ends, and throw the beans in a pot with water. You’ll cook them when everything else is closer to ready. They won’t need the little bit of butter you’ll add when they’re done but you’ll add it anyway. Cooking for one is about the little pleasures you enjoy.

You pull out a cutting board and unwrap the ground beef you pulled out of the freezer this morning. A hamburger is a blank template, each customized with preferred toppings by the person who will eat it. Whenever you make burger patties, you want to mix things into the meat to feel fancier, sautéed onions and mushrooms and maybe some unorthodox spices. This, however, requires advanced planning you didn’t do, and you’re hungry enough to be happy with a plain patty. The ground beef squelches under your hands. It grosses you out. You shape three roughly equal medallions, making them larger than the last time you made burgers. They shrink as they cook. 

You realize you don’t have buns or mayonnaise in the house, and make a short trip to the store to get some. You always get brioche buns. It’s a little extra, but they’re so much better. You get home and start the grill.

Zucchini plants are notorious for producing a lot of fruit. In childhood, the vegetable was your least favorite because you ate so much of it. Now, cooking it, you understand. Zucchini is easy to add to any dish. It takes on whatever flavors surround it. You use a recipe from your sister, which is less a recipe and more a list of spices. You chop a medium size fruit and sautée it with garlic powder, salt, pepper, and chili powder. You’ll add some parmesan when it’s done, which it won’t need, but will elevate the vegetable..

You slice a tomato from the garden as everything cooks. You pull a slice for your burger and plate the rest with salt and pepper.

With everything on your plate, you realize there’s some space left, and run to the garden for a few kale leaves, throwing together a salad. It’s one of your newer culinary loves, combining many favorite ingredients. You add red onions, a dressing of white vinegar and olive oil, and a little parmesan. Hours later you’ll realize you forgot to add cashews or dried cherries, and in the following weeks you’ll learn that balsamic vinegar is better, but neither impacts your enjoyment of the salad.

You sit on the porch with your plate of food, enjoying your work. A gentle breeze blows past and keeps you from overheating. You watch the hummingbirds fight over the feeder not ten feet away. You feel the satisfaction the creator must have on the seventh day as with each bite you think, that’s good.

Sam Tuit

Sam Tuit graduated from Calvin in 2021 with a degree in film and media. He lives in Grand Rapids and works as an event coordinator. In his free time, he loves trying new things, cooking for others, and having nuanced conversations about the stories our society is telling.